The Warm-Up: Football's coming back, and it's okay to be happy about it

It’s not going to feel quite right. It’s going to look extremely weird. It will be football, but not as we know it. But there is something inescapably comforting and heartening about a fixture list starting to materialise in front of our eyes. Lockdown is easing; some business are reopening; you can see your parents again from Monday; and football, tentatively, is on the way back.

We’ve been in lockdown for two months now. A time of purgatory which has lacked structure. Days bleeding into one another; weekends carrying little to no significance; the same routine every day. But from June 17, this existence will suddenly be imbued with additional meaning for football fans after the Premier League announced the next phase of Project Restart: the whole restarting bit.

Two weeks on Wednesday, Arsenal will face Manchester City and Aston Villa will take on Sheffield United as games in hand are rubbed out. Then from June 19-21 we will kick off a run of six consecutive weekends of action, plus three midweek rounds, to get the Premier League wrapped up by July 25. With all 92 games shown on television. At least that’s the plan.

The BBC reports that later today, the FA will announce plans for how to wrap up the FA Cup, which is at the quarter-final stage, and the Champions League is now likely to restart on August 6.

We don’t know kick-off times, fixture dates or even venues – with reports in the press that Liverpool will have to play their remaining home matches at neutral stadiums. There won’t be any fans. Not everyone’s happy about it and the suggestion from the government recently that bringing football back would raise the morale of the nation was met with short shrift by Danny Rose. “I don’t give a f*** about the nation’s morale, lives are at risk,” he said. But this writer’s morale does feel a little more perky on this late May morning, it must be said.

The Warm-Up has always maintained that the season must be finished – but only when it’s safe to do so. And the Bundesliga has shown that what once seemed faintly ludicrous – football operating in a bubble of rigorous isolation from the rest of society, conducting mass testing and resuming contact sport during a pandemic – is indeed manageable. Football can return, albeit only in highly controlled circumstances.

This won’t be a normal end to the season. Any players who don’t feel safe to play should be allowed to adopt that stance without fear of recrimination. Even an act as anodyne as going to visit your parents in their garden currently carries with it an element of risk, however small. We are all, even subconsciously, weighing up risk versus reward every time we step out of the house, or order a Deliveroo. For some the inherent risk is greater than others and anyone who feels unsafe should be supported in that stance. No one has command of all the right answers in these circumstances.

But even if it seemed desperately unlikely even a week or two ago, the Premier League is coming back. We can only hope it isn’t doing so too early. If evidence emerges that that is the case then it should be shut down quickly. If someone involved in Project Restart – a player, a member of staff, someone required to work at a stadium – becomes seriously ill as a result then football will face some very tough questions. At the back of our minds we know this to be true, even if we don’t want to consider it.

But don’t feel guilty if you woke up this morning with a little spring in your step, with a little muscle memory of that excitable anticipation you feel the day the fixture list is announced. Football is important to our lives and it will enrich them once again. However surreal it may be.

Completing a quartet of major European leagues to set a firm return date, it was yesterday confirmed that Serie A will be back in action on June 20. With the Bundesliga already back up and running and La Liga slated to return on June 11, that means that in as little as 22 days, 80% of Europe’s top leagues will be operational again.

The exception is France’s Ligue 1, which has been cancelled even while lockdown restrictions are eased across the country – a fact not lost on L’Equipe this morning, which runs with a headline loosely translated as, “like idiots?”

Back to Italy, and although their response to a positive test for any staff member of player will result in a two-week quarantine for a whole club – a much firmer plan than the Premier League, which will instead isolate individuals – sports minister Vincenzo Spadafora is comfortable that football is ready to come back.

"It was a very useful meeting and, as we had said from the start, football was always going to resume when we had the conditions to ensure safety and the committee gave the go-ahead to the protocol," said Spadafora.

"Italy is getting back on track and it is only fair that football should too. The committee agreed with the protocol, but confirmed the absolute necessity for a quarantine period if a player tests positive.”

Arsenal’s alleged away kit for next season appears to have been leaked and it’s… an interesting vibe.

There’s a slightly Orwellian feel to the Danish league’s answer to the problem of not having fans at games: streaming them in on Zoom via huge screens at the side of the pitch.

Football’s relaunching, you say?

It's Freiburg v Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga tonight and you can follow it live with us - kick-off at 7:30pm!